First, the site now resides in a domain of its own on the web which will not be immediately identified as a WordPress location (although WordPress will still be the organization that publishing its posts).

Second, because the new format will allow me to post videos.

Third–and mort importantly–because, going forward, there will be no more ads on the site. (If you see any, let me know right away!) Apparently, when your blog gains a certain number of Followers, the powers-that-be at WordPress decide it is worth their, and their advertisers, while to start inserting ads into your posts. Once this begins, the ads can only be gotten rid of if you pay WordPress to take them away. I paid. A principal reason for doing so is that, having seen some of the ads when I logged onto the site via another device, I was not infrequently appalled by what was being sold. So would Mr. Ruskin have been.

Ruskin was a lifetime opponent of advertizing for a number of reasons: Because he thought they gave unfair market advantage to those who were richer (i.e., those who had the money to pay for them); because they were intended to keep you out of a someone else’s store (that is, to deprive someone else of needed income); because they could be selling a product inferior to the one sold by another seller; because, not infrequently, they were intended to make you, the person seeing them, want something you didn’t need or seduce you into buying something that was actually harmful to your body, mind, or soul (cigarets will do as an excellent example of a good which are, in reality, bads–his coinage); or, finally, because ads were created by a socioeconomic system dedicated to making us think that the monetary value of a thing was its signal quality.